Comment by InTheArena | Hacker News Reader

Comment by InTheArena | Hacker News Reader

By Edward Niedermeyer September 9, 2019

Oh. Nevermind.

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Edited - from the downvotes, it appears that people are not aware - this is the same guy who was the editor in chief of truthabout cars when they ran their infamous "Tesla Death Watch" / Tesla killer articles. He constantly re-iterated that the company was doomed before the roadster, then before the S, then before the X, then before the 3. He accused the company of Fraud in 2009, and has heralded every single vehicle from this to the leaf, to the Taycan and i-pace (how's that working for you Audi?) to the Fisker Karma as "tesla-killers".

How about articles like this:

https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2009/04/teslas-model-s-pon...

He's about as accurate as Elon Musk is punctual. He appears to be the natural anti-matter to the most extreme of the Tesla fans.

But remember it's Toyota that is actually the disruptor:

"Toyota is no stranger to disruption, having overturned the global car business over the course of decades. But rather than high-concept, visionary technology and hype, it was Toyota's mastery of the culture of manufacturing that drove it from bit player to industry titan. Toyota emphasizes kaizen, or continuous improvement, not Musk's mercurial style. And based on a scan of quality complaints at various Tesla owner forums, it seems Musk could learn more from Toyota's automotive disruptions than the other way around. Auto industry success is a marathon, not a sprint ... and at current volumes, Tesla is barely walking."

The allegation was that Tesla was dipping in to preorder money and was insolvent. You seem to treat it as a foregone conclusion he was wrong, but that seems almost quaint in the context of 420 and the Solar City bailout. I don't know whether or not it happened but Musk wouldn't give it a second thought.

Ed's been continually wrong about Tesla because Musk is willing to do anything to keep it going, ethics and legality notwithstanding.

It's really quite impressive, and while I'm fairly bearish on the company, I wouldn't count it out until and unless he calls it quits.

What's your issue with this paragraph about Toyota, exactly? I get that kaizen, with its emphasis on boring notions like quality control, slow & careful iteration, etc. is at odds with fashionable Silicon Valley ideas of blitzscaling or an under-five-years "cash out, bro down" company cycle, but it's undeniably true that Toyota did revolutionize the auto industry.

Indeed. I'm anxiously waiting Toyota's entry into the EV market. In Japan they have a fair amount of catchup given that the entire fast charging infrastructure is basically being run by Nissan and Mitsubishi... However I'm sure they have something up their sleeves. I'm extremely interested in the fact that Toyota has chosen Panasonic as their battery supplier. Toyota and Panasonic's headquarters are only a little over an hour a way by Shinkansen... If I were Toyota I would be wandering over to Osaka fairly frequently to make sure that my company was getting more than our fair share of the available batteries...

They keep doubling down on hydrogen even when it's clearly not working. Other than that they seem perfectly content to keep cranking out vehicles with their once groundbreaking but now aging hybrid synergy drive system. Unfortunately I think it'll take a change of guard at Toyota's highest levels to get them back in the innovation game.

This is the second time I've heard that, but I see no evidence from here in Japan that they are doing anything with hydrogen these days. Can you point me to some references?

Edit: I should point out as well that they are actually building EV cars right now. They have a joint venture with several other Japan car manufacturers. They will start selling for the 2020 sales year (which I expect will start pretty soon).

They're not doing anything with hydrogen, they're just hanging onto the "hydrogen future" bluff that U.S. car companies used to kill the CARB EV mandate and have now all but abandoned.

I mean, check the tag line on Toyota's own site: https://www.toyota.com/alternative-fuel/

Hybrid. Plug-in Hybrid (yay?). Fuel Cell EV.

That's their game plan. Even then the only plug-in hybrid is the Prius, none of their other cars seem to be plug-in capable.

In fairness, Elon Musk himself has stated that Tesla has been several weeks from failure at multiple times in its history (most recently, in the fall of 2018). It's not like the critics were wrong about the financial health of the company.

> i-pace (how's that working for you Audi?)

i-pace is Jaguar.

Audi's etron is also doing quite poorly: https://insideevs.com/news/369439/august-audi-e-tron-sales-u...

And it's not due to limited inventory, when I checked a few days ago, there were 125 etrons on dealer lots in Canada.

Do you have any issues with the facts reported in this specific article?

The world isn't that simple. A person's reasons for talking about something and their framing and slant/bias deeply affect the trust one can put in what they say. You can avoid outright lies and untruths while still pushing a very specific agenda.

Just as you put more or less trust into what the people in your life say, based on their history, you should put more or less trust into what particular articles say, based on the article writer's history.

My trust in random article writers that happen to appear in HN is already low, as it should be. I'm not sure why this one specifically deserves a takedown, which are not at all common on HN, except for the fact that he happened to criticize Tesla, which triggers some people.

The beauty of reading an essay or article on HN is that you don’t have to trust the author. You get to take into account upvotes and downvotes, as well as comments about the factual accuracy of the article.

Same for comments.

By all means dismiss facts if you don’t like the source, or wait until someone you trust (or don’t distrust) writes about the subject if you like, everyone gets to have their own strategy for consuming information.

But for me, one of the great advantages of HN, one that outweighs things I dislike, is that I can read informative things from people I’d otherwise dismiss and learn a great deal from the discussion.

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